"You say a win's a win when you play a bad game and you win," said the old philosopher Humphries. "A win against this team is more than a win for us. It sends a message that we're a tough team and we can beat anyone."

Ford appreciated the fact Horford visited him in the hospital Tuesday.

"It wasn't a dirty play at all," said Ford. "He got caught in a bad spot trying to block a shot. He's a good kid, he came to the hospital (and) probably spent two hours there laughing and joking and just talking about basketball."

It's a missing piece on the Raptors, more guys willing to get in someone's face and send a message that this kind of play is unacceptable. This is not to advocate a fight, or a player leaving the bench and getting himself suspended, as the GM noted. But someone needs to throw the basketball equivalent of a brushback pitch now and then.

"They earned the right to stay on the court, which just made a world of difference because I think if we had to play Chris (Bosh) and Jose (Calderon) 40 minutes plus, we would have been in trouble,'' said Mitchell.

"I'm definitely at a higher risk than anybody in the NBA, and that fact has never changed," he said. "(But) I felt that (if I was in danger of suffering a serious injury), I don't think I would play. I have a son that I definitely want to be able to play with. I don't think I could live with not being able to do a lot of things with him. So if it gets to that point I definitely would (give it up)."

A stinger is basically an injury to the nerve bundles that exit the spinal cord, causing pain and numbness. Sometimes they last an hour; sometimes they last several days. And due to the congenital condition called spinal stenosis - a narrowing of the spinal canal - Ford is prone to stingers. Any play, even a freak one like this one, can result in a spinal board, just to be sure.

But the narrowing means that he has an increased risk of catastrophic injury, simply because he has less room for error. The common analogy is hold a pencil vertically with one hand, and form a loose circle around it with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand. That is a normal spinal column. Now grasp the pencil tightly, allowing almost no extra space. That is spinal stenosis.